Fairtrade

What does Fair­trade mean for you?

Most of the com­modi­ties in the mar­ket place today are pro­duced with no indi­ca­tion on the product’s labels of where and how the ingre­di­ents were grown or devel­oped. Often this means that with com­mod­ity prod­ucts like cof­fee, tea and of course choco­late, the grow­ers (usu­ally in the third world) are under­paid for their pro­duce. The price they are paid not being gov­erned by the set cost of sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion but by volatile world mar­kets leav­ing grow­ers vul­ner­a­ble. Obvi­ously this is not fair! Ensur­ing that pro­duc­ers earn enough money from the prod­uct that they grow enables them to invest in edu­ca­tion, health, their envi­ron­ment and make choices about their futures. Fair Trade is about giv­ing power back to the growers.

For Fair­trade prod­ucts cov­ered by the FLO stan­dards (i.e. tea, cof­fee and choco­late) the FAIRTRADE Label is your only inde­pen­dent guar­an­tee that the prod­ucts you are buy­ing have been fairly traded. To learn more about the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem behind the label/guarantee.

To find out more go to: www.fairtrade.net

What is a co-operative?

Clearly, the advan­tages of inter­na­tional trade are not reach­ing all peo­ple in the world. For small farm­ers, access to mar­ket or price infor­ma­tion is dif­fi­cult and as a result, many small farm­ers become more and more depen­dent on middlemen.

Co-operatives are groups of small farm­ers who have joined together gain to form demo­c­ra­t­i­cally run organ­i­sa­tions. Pro­duc­ers and work­ers get expe­ri­ence in organ­is­ing them­selves to defend their rights together and not depend any­more on oth­ers. Pro­duc­ers learn about the inter­na­tional trade of their prod­uct, acquire export expe­ri­ence and can improve the qual­ity of their prod­uct through close coop­er­a­tion with Fair­trade reg­is­tered importers. Work­ers learn what their rights are and how the organ­i­sa­tion is man­aged. They are also involved in project def­i­n­i­tion of the Fair­trade pre­mium income, which goes towards the com­mu­nity i.e. envi­ron­ment, edu­ca­tion, com­mu­nity structure.

Who grows Cocolo Chocolate?

El Ceibo

El Ceibo is made up of thirty-six smaller co-operatives and derives its name from a tree, which, once cut down, con­tin­ues to pro­duce new shoots reflect­ing the strength of its mem­bers. Its oper­a­tions reflect the cul­ture of the indige­nous pop­u­la­tion. The farm­ers own the co-operative and a rota­tion sys­tem exists whereby all mem­bers spend some time at the cocoa fac­tory in the cap­i­tal, La Paz, or in the admin­is­tra­tive sec­tion. This sys­tem enables the farm­ers extra oppor­tu­ni­ties to develop skills that will help them remain com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket. Sol­i­dar­ity is a key fea­ture of the co-operative at all lev­els. El Ceibo utilises the Fair­trade benifits of both pre­mium and fair price in the fol­low­ing cru­cial ways:

Social: Fair­trade has enabled the farm­ers to break­out of the exploita­tive agri­cul­tural sys­tem through their increased inde­pen­dence and mar­ket­ing power. The Fair­trade ben­e­fits have ensured that there is a col­lec­tive fund avail­able for com­mu­nity work. A Safety fund has also been set up that can be accessed by all mem­bers in case of a med­ical emer­gency. In fact, farm­ers are required to reserve some of their rev­enue for social projects, ensur­ing com­mu­nity devel­op­ment and tech­ni­cal train­ing is avail­able, and pro­vide a safety fund for med­ical emer­gen­cies. The farm­ers are gen­er­ally eager to par­tic­i­pate in co-operative ini­tia­tives given the strong sense of com­mu­nity spirit and this is reflected in the use of Fair­trade pre­mi­ums. In 1995, using Fair­trade bonuses and its own resources, El Ceibo began con­struc­tion of a new fac­tory, equipped with mod­ern instal­la­tions. This fac­tory enables the pro­duc­ers to man­u­fac­ture cocoa prod­ucts that meet the high stan­dards set by the Euro­pean Union, thus enabling their export to Europe.

Envi­ron­men­tal: Fair­trade has ensured that efforts have been made to increase the eco­log­i­cal land man­age­ment tech­niques. These include shade cul­ti­va­tion, com­post­ing and min­imis­ing the use of chem­i­cals, with incen­tives for organic pro­duc­tion includ­ing a higher price on the mar­ket. Ninety five per­cent of El Ceibo’s pro­duc­ers con­serve vir­gin rain for­est and attempt to reduce degra­da­tion through mul­ti­fac­eted styles of pro­duc­tion. Nat­ural meth­ods are used to con­trol pests. Train­ing activ­i­ties are held related to cocoa pro­duc­tion, agro forestry and diver­si­fi­ca­tion. In recent years, the money derived from pre­mi­ums has been given directly to farm­ers as an incen­tive for organic production.

Cono­cado

The National Con­fed­er­a­tion of Domini­can Cocoa Pro­duc­ers (Cono­cado) is a group of 9,000 small scale cocoa farm­ers in the Domini­can Repub­lic. Founded in 1988 as a response to low global cocoa prices, CONACADO aims to decrease depen­dency on mid­dle­men by export­ing their prod­ucts directly to con­sumer mar­kets. Because cocoa accounts for 90 per­cent of its mem­bers’ cash income, earn­ing the Fair Trade pre­mium makes a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in mem­bers’ lives.

CONACADO pro­vides its mem­bers with the fol­low­ing sup­port: Tech­ni­cal assis­tance and train­ing to enable co-op mem­bers to improve the qual­ity of their cocoa pro­duc­tion l Interest-free loans and access to credit l Export assis­tance through stor­age space and trans­porta­tion of mem­bers’ crops to the mar­ket l Fund­ing for devel­op­ment projects by apply­ing for funds from inter­na­tional donors CONACADO cocoa is cer­ti­fied organic and is grown under the shade canopy of fruit-producing trees that pro­vide food secu­rity for the farm­ers. Sales to the Fair Trade mar­ket have enabled CONACADO to set up a nurs­ery that sup­plies low-cost plants to farm­ers so that they can grow most of their own food. Inspired by the suc­cess of CONACADO, some pro­duc­ers’ wives have formed asso­ci­a­tions and have started busi­nesses mak­ing wine, liquor, jams, choco­lates, and organic fertilizers.

“With Fair trade income we were able to imple­ment a fer­men­ta­tion pro­gram to improve the qual­ity of our cocoa and to con­vert our pro­duc­tion to cer­ti­fied organic. This improved our posi­tion in the export mar­ket. The Fair Trade mar­ket is a very impor­tant mar­ket for the sur­vival of our asso­ciates.“
– Isidoro de la Rosa, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CONACADO.

Alter­trade

Alter Trade is located in the Philip­pines and works to improve con­di­tions on the island of Negros, where small-scale farm­ing takes place. Cane sugar is gen­er­ally the favoured crop for cash income. Although it accounts for a very min­i­mal por­tion of the Philip­pines’ export earn­ings, the work avail­able on sugar estates is the only form of employ­ment for many of the land­less and near land­less inhab­i­tants of Negros. The exis­tence of Alter Trade ensures that these con­di­tions are at least man­age­able and that farm­ers can improve their lives, although they still may be denied access to land ownership.

The Alter Trade Foun­da­tion Incor­po­rated is cur­rently involved in pro­mot­ing three pro­grams it hopes will prac­ti­cally imple­ment its aims for its pro­duc­ers. The Holis­tic Organ­i­sa­tional Empow­er­ment pro­gram is tar­geted at improv­ing the skills of the pro­duc­ers and encour­ages them to develop inde­pen­dent and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties; the Sus­tain­able Pro­duc­tion and Area Devel­op­ment Enter­prise pro­gram aims to increase the qual­ity and value of prod­ucts; the Capa­bil­ity Build­ing and Sup­port Ser­vices pro­gram aims to pro­vide credit and train­ing to enter­pris­ing groups and indi­vid­u­als that wish to under­take projects in line with the afore­men­tioned programs.

APPTA

APPTA is an asso­ci­a­tion of small pro­duc­ers founded in 1987. Cur­rently the asso­ci­a­tion con­sists of 1067 pro­duc­ers of which 80% is indige­nous Bribri or Cabé­car and 20% is black or white. Women con­sist 38% of the mem­bers of the association.

We are work­ing in more than 30 com­mu­ni­ties in the south­ern Caribbean region of Costa Rica: Tala­manca. Our orga­ni­za­tion works in the aspect of organic agri­cul­ture and its impli­ca­tions in our present and future.

Cur­rently we are work­ing in the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of organ­i­cally cer­ti­fied cacao, bananas, and other fruits. APPTA has been rec­og­nized for its efforts in pre­serv­ing the envi­ron­ment in a pro­duc­tive way. The efforts have impelled the devel­op­ment of Talamanca’s tra­di­tional agro-ecological pro­duc­tion sys­tem to real­ize the recov­ery of ben­e­fi­cial con­di­tions for the envi­ron­ment while also induc­ing the devel­op­ment of income-generating capac­i­ties. The envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity and capac­ity build­ing are sought through 1) the devel­op­ment of train­ing processes, 2) the improve­ment of the pro­duc­tion and process of cacao, 3) the con­stant mar­ket­ing of banana for puree, banana for fresh fruit, and 4) the place­ment of some 20 organic prod­ucts in the national mar­ket. These are done not only with the tech­ni­cal team, but also with pro­duc­ers. The fruits and crops are pro­duced in the tra­di­tional way prac­ticed by the ances­tors of the inhab­i­tants of Tala­manca that cul­ti­vate in an inte­grated sys­tem; cacao, together with bananas and other crops are pro­duced under the shades of lum­ber trees and fruit trees, which pro­vides great con­di­tions to pro­tect the environment.